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Trade and Trade Alike

With the trade deadline swiftly approaching many fantasy owners are eager to pull off the trade of the century, the one that will either turn around their season’s fortune or that will take them to the league championship, but that’s difficult to predict or plan for, and one false move might instead doom your team. Sometimes it’s about the little trades, the small tweaks that will put you over the top, but you have to be savvy to pull those off and lucky in the execution of them.

In one of my leagues I’m sitting at 4-5 primarily due to poor play from my round 1 pick (Eddie Lacy) and inconsistent play from my wide receiving corps — besides Antonio Brown — (Michael Crabtree, Kelvin Benjamin, Vincent Jackson, Wes Welker). It seemed like from week to week I couldn’t count on any of the two of them to produce at the same time, which doomed me to a 1-5 start to the season. That’s when I realized I had to get active so I went to the waiver wire and found Mike Evans, but that wasn’t enough. I needed to jettison some dead weight and take a gamble.

So I put Eddie Lacy on the trade market and eventually got Shane Vereen in exchange for him, then sent DeMarco Murray to the worst team in the league in exchange for Fred Jackson and Giovani Bernard. I picked up Ronnie Hillman and Jeremy Hill off waivers, and they’ve all sustained me throughout my current three game winning streak. And I’ve just accepted another trade with an eye on getting to the playoffs.

I send:

Ronnie Hillman Giovani Bernard Rob Gronkowski

I get:

LeSean McCoy Ahmad Bradshaw Julius Thomas

The key piece to the deal for me was LeSean McCoy, as you can see I’ve had injury issues in my backfield (most notably Bernard the past two weeks), and looking at the schedule for Shady it actually sets up well for a renaissance of sorts at the end of the fantasy season. In addition, I like that he has Mark Sanchez now at quarterback because he needs a safety blanket, and Shady is the best one around to catch passes out of the backfield. Did I like having to give up Gronkowski? No. But his own injury history played a role in that one, and I think Julius Thomas will be a suitable replacement, despite the past three games. Manning will find him, and often, going forward.

Doing this trade means I have a solid backfield of Bradshaw (who has been the #6 scoring running back in fantasy so far this season), and McCoy (who faces several poor running defenses in a row the next four weeks), and I can leave Frank Gore on my bench instead of having to play him and biting my fingernails the entire time. Of course I won’t know how well the trade works for me until a few weeks down the line, but I felt like I had to pull the trigger.

And I play the number one team in my division this week, so wish me luck.